


Sunset Veins

by inktomi



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,501
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inktomi/pseuds/inktomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Don’t be dull,” says Sherlock, and holds his hands up like a surrender, the glint of metal in the palm of his gloves. “What does it look like?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“John,” says Sherlock, his voice perfectly normal, smooth as _John pass me my phone_ , or _John, would you make some tea?_

John flinches. He looks down at the coarse floor, dark; and the barest outline of something darker, spreading outward from a bulk next to Sherlock’s feet. He closes his eyes. Opens them. Sherlock is still there, watching, observing, and John has never felt so sick in his life.

“Sher-” he tries, and takes a deep breath, and tries again. “Sherlock. What is this?”’

Sherlock cocks his head. The shadowed light from the thin sliver of moon in the sky catches his face. His eyes are sure and clear. His expression is painfully, utterly familiar, exasperation mixed with a peculiar tenderness that he has only ever directed at John.

“Don’t be dull,” says Sherlock, and John’s heart squeezes tight, and falls somewhere small and far with the rest of him, filled with a distant terror that is not even for himself. Absurd. He tamps down a hysterical giggle - it’s a crime scene. Sherlock holds his hands up, like a surrender, the glint of metal in the palm of his gloves. “What does it look like?”

  
-

John is silent. Sherlock lets the knife fall from his hands. It lands with a soft tinkle, a small shard of light on the floorboards, the reflection half marred by something wet and dark. He says, “You’ve woken up in the middle of the night more than once to find me missing. You’ve been in my room, which always smells clean, and occasionally of disinfectant. You’ve been warned off me by dozens of acquaintances. You’ve noticed that London is occasionally, intolerably crime free, until one day I leave, and it’s not.”

Sherlock pauses, and continues, “You have a gun in your pocket. You don’t bring your gun unless you’re reasonably certain that you will encounter danger. Denial is not attractive on you, John.”

“Don’t,” warns John, low and furious. After everything, John was still hopelessly, helplessly destroying himself, and now this. “Don’t. I’m not going to-- I’m not going to _shoot_ you.”

“Why not?” asks Sherlock, curious, as if he actually expects an answer. John does laugh, then, a little wild around the edges, and he covers his mouth to stop the sound. “Interesting,” murmurs Sherlock, as if it were a reply. John doesn’t really care what Sherlock’s deduced from that, except that he does. He steps forward and bends to pick up the knife.

Sherlock moves with frightening speed, seizing John’s wrist in a painful clamp, and John doesn’t even think - he twists and attacks. He catches Sherlock on the side of his jaw, glancing, and is almost literally swept off his feet because Sherlock has done something with his legs while he was moving, and John ducks into a roll and comes up with his shirt damp and sticky. He touches a hand to his side and it comes away smelling of copper. Sherlock stands, cradling his jaw with bloody gloves, and watches John, cool and knowing.

“I have a black belt in judo,” says Sherlock. “Too much of your combat repertoire is meant to maim or kill. Further hand-to-hand is pointless since you have already established your disinclination to do either.”

“Shut up,” John grits his teeth, a dead man’s blood on his clothes. _On his clothes_.

“You’ll have to burn them,” says Sherlock, sounding not in the least affected, or maybe even slightly happy. “It’s an awful jumper, anyway.”

John says, “I like this jumper,” and then, slightly horrified at the extent he realises he is able to go for this mad, impossible genius, at the ease with which he says, resigned, “I’m covering for you, aren’t I,” just like fetching tea, hot enough to burn.

“And I’m covering for you covering for me,” says Sherlock, who leans down and recovers the knife. “Luckily, I’m much better at this than you are. Please try not to touch things without gloves.”

John makes a strangled sort of sound. He almost buries his face in his hands, but remembers the blood just in time.

  
-

“I’ll be a few hours,” says Sherlock, blood and wool slung over his arm. John’s hand is no longer wet, but he doesn’t know where to put it. He asks. Sherlock shrugs, a soft line of movement in the darkness. “Clench your fist. No one’s going to look. Wash it off at home.”

“What about my shoes? Or the rest of my clothes. Fibres. Whatever it is you do at crime scenes.” John swallows. “When you’re investigating them, I mean.”

Sherlock says with absolute calm, “I’m covering for you, John,” and, “It’s alright. Go home.”

John opens his mouth. Closes it. Obeys.

  
-

John sits, jumperless, in 221B. His hands are clean. They do not shake.

His mobile shudders on the armrest; he slides it across and holds it up to his ear.

“John,” comes Mycroft voice, plainly tired. John pulls the screen away to check the time: 03:15. He is suddenly exhausted, and bends over in the couch. Two weeks ago they had post-case takeout here at three in the morning. John had laughed at the way Sherlock devoured all the _siew mai_ ; Sherlock had favoured him a with a crooked smile that spoke to the adrenaline rush in John’s veins, and there in the middle of the night John had felt invincible.

“John,” says Mycroft again, voice tiny from the speakers. He puts his phone back to his ear.

“Yeah.”

Mycroft’s voice is heavy in the silence, the distant voices of night muffled through the curtains that John drew closed to shield his home. “You must understand. Sherlock is very important to me, and you to him. In general, neither of us are in the habit of caring for others. Whatever else, he would never harm you.”

John breathes quietly. “You would.”

Mycroft doesn’t try to deny it. “Sherlock comes first,” he says.

John understands. How couldn’t he? In too many things, he is the same. It almost makes him smile, and after a while, he decides he can afford it: a sad upward tugging of one cheek, a whisper into the phone. “Goodnight, Mycroft.”

“Goodnight, John,” says Mycroft. The line goes dead.

John holds his phone, and his gun, and waits.

  
-

He knows how Sherlock sounds traversing the front door and climbing the steps, careful of the loose floorboards, shifting his weight so only the faintest footfalls can be heard. He knows the sound of the doorknob turning, and the sound of Sherlock’s surprise: a quiet little huff, like when he’d opened his birthday present and found new sets of microscope slides - because he’d either corroded or broken most of his own two days before - and John had smiled at the look on Sherlock’s face, desperately fond. He doesn’t turn around to see what Sherlock looks like now.

“I’ll be a minute,” says Sherlock, his voice a low sound in the night. He heads to the bathroom. At the sound of the running water John looks down at his own hands. He’d scrubbed them clean enough to perform an impromptu surgery, but it’s himself that he needs to open up and rearrange: to bring his heart back to his ribcage, to reboot his brain where tendrils of emotion have infiltrated his nervous system. He’s always been better at fixing others than himself.

Sherlock comes up to stand beside him, and he sits on the armrest, dipping the couch to the right. The smell of hydrogen peroxide twists John’s head, and he looks.

Sherlock is impeccable, natural. He raises his arm, covered with wool. John’s jumper, washed white as snow.

“You said you liked it,” says Sherlock simply.

John puts down the gun. Sherlock notices, and makes another quiet huff, and smiles wide. John reaches out, digs his fingers into the warmth. “I do,” he says.

Sherlock leans in. John closes his eyes, and yields.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Fall Out Boy-
> 
> _there's a drug in the thermostat to warm the room up/ and there's another around to help us bend your trust/ i've got a sunset in my veins/ and I need to take a pill to make this town feel okay._
> 
> Wrote this for myself late last night/ very early in the morning, and talked to a friend who told me that I should post things instead of keeping them in the cloud forever, so here it is along with this explanation for the lack of plot, general incoherence, etc. Apologies.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally intended to be a oneshot. I did not know I was going to write more but since I did - here, have the vague beginnings of hinted plot that may never come to fruition! :D I hope it's enjoyable anyway.

John blinks into wakefulness. There is a small crick in his neck and he winces as it makes itself known. He'd fallen asleep on the sofa again, but there is a something warm and soft draped over his shoulders like an awkward attempt at comfort.

John takes a deep breath. It smells like Baker Street: tea and biscuits and John's soap, and the lingering scent of hydrogen peroxide. Baker Street smells like chemicals more often than the average house, but there have not been any noxious experiments recently. Just like that, John remembers.

"Good, you're up," says Sherlock.

His voice is perfect, matter-of-fact deduction. This morning it is a cold finger trickling along John's spine; it banishes all lingering illusions of normalcy. John can feel his gun at his side and he pockets it gently, a familiar comfort.

"We have a case," adds Sherlock, triumphant. There is an edge to the statement - a catch. John understands. He stands and turns, pulling on the jumper, and his leg does not buckle even once. Sherlock is looking at it, and at John's hand, and so has a perfect view of how his fingers curl into fists steady enough to hurt or to heal. The inclination for both itches at him but leaves his hands be.

"Do we," says John.

Sherlock's eyes are bright and happy. "Yes," he says. He looks straight at John as he says it, and with far too much interest.

John presses his lips together, a tired suspicion arising. "Sherlock," he says, "This is not about me. My actions are not a puzzle. I am not a case."

Sherlock doesn't reply to that, which after months of cohabitation is to John as good as a reply. Sherlock whirls around and does something to a few beakers in the sink and they make fragile clanging noises, a tiny smile crooking at the corner of his lips. His profile is illuminated by the fluorescent kitchen light, shadowing his cheekbones, haunting and sharp.

John has let Sherlock conduct experiments on him before: on his hair, on the cells of the soles of his feet, on his tolerance for sounds in terms of both frequency and decibel - but on nothing so important; nothing like this. He's seen Sherlock dissect a person in seconds and throw them away. He's seen the breathtaking, ruthless precision with which Sherlock has manipulated and the lengths to which Sherlock has gone in order to get what he wants, and he knows that being the sole focus of Sherlock Holmes is a very bad idea. _Dangerous_ , he thinks, and then ends up smiling - a little self-deprecating and a little as a warning, a sign enough for the both of them.

John says, "The case. What am I going to find?"

Sherlock sets down the beakers. His eyes flicker to the shape of John's gun and back, invisible beneath the wool. The silence stretches and John inhales, long, and long-suffering.

"You don't have to come," says Sherlock, and it's soft enough to be a whisper. Sherlock turns away, his face gone small, and John hates it.

"Don't be ridiculous," John bites out, filled with sudden distaste. He can't stand it - this thing, this vulnerable different thing that is not Sherlock, or Sherlock acting in their own _home_ \- but at the moment he can hardly stand himself too, or this day, or this dangerous, exciting, literally bloody life - and so he says, shaking his head, "Of course I'm going," because it was no choice at all.

Sherlock grins. The corners of his eyes burst into a network of tiny etchings spreading outward; an explosion of alien beauty. It's like a dozen roads leading to nowhere: to crime scenes, to danger, to death. John's already grabbing his coat.

 

-

The crime scene is different in the light. There's wallpaper now - something faded and floral, peeling at the tips. There's colours, and there's the body, moved since last night; there's the stains on the floorboards, dry. John presses his hand into his jumper, but both are clean and warm. The dissonance is jarring for a moment, and something must have shown: Sherlock looks over immediately. His eyes are wide with concern, and John wants to laugh at that, only he can't. It's not just a crime scene - it's _their_ crime scene, and if he breaks out into giggles it would be a perfect addendum to this entire episode of Sherlock and John, this bizarre comedy/horror/drama, but real life isn't as lazy as on the telly, and it would be a Bit Not Good, and may very well encourage Sherlock to do even more things that are Extremely Not Good.

John lifts his head to see Greg raise an eyebrow in askance. Greg is a good man. He doesn't deserve this.

"I'm fine," he lies. Sherlock gives him a piercing look for a half-second, then returns his attention to the body, snapping out his magnifying glass with his usual dramatic flair: going through the motions, misdirecting, wild and content.

_Sherlock, lean and sharp, smiling in the moonlight, content._

John presses his lips together, stands straighter. He hopes Scotland Yard doesn't notice.

"Too incompetent," says Sherlock.

"What?" asks Greg.

"Not you," says Sherlock, glancing over at John. John tries not to grimace, and bends to look. "The victim."

"Stabbing," says John, uselessly. Sherlock rolls his eyes, points - John moves over, and sniffs.  "Asphyxiation, too. He was - drunk?"

"An alcoholic," declares Sherlock, and rattles off deductions: violent, angry, gambler. He beat his wife, possibly his kids. He's been living alone for a while now - they left one day in a hurry - look at the mittens under the sofa, patched with whatever scraps of cloth they must found, yet they simply left it lying around when they ran away. Unemployed - the scuff marks, badly concealed; here's where he used to keep their money, but it's now empty. He's been stealing.

It goes on, and on. By the time Sherlock's stopped for breath twice, John is standing the straightest he has ever stood in his life, rigid and coldly furious. His anger is one that burns; for all his tendency to combat he is not a violent man, and he knows how to save his strength and pick his battles. A remnant from his childhood. Sherlock must have known this about him too, because otherwise he'd never have risked bringing John along like this - and this, this is the experiment, isn't it? This is him, the case, the dependent variable to Sherlock's prodding.

"So," asks Greg. "Who killed him?"

John opens his mouth. He looks at Sherlock and presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth, behind his teeth, and bites down hard.

Sherlock looks at John, and John burns, and curls his hands into fists by his side. Sherlock smiles crookedly, and John tries very hard not to kill him in front of the police.

Sherlock looks at John, and for a moment his face looks so tender that all John can think is, furiously, _You have no right. No right._

"Oh," says Sherlock, "That's obvious. I did."


End file.
